


projected stars across the night sky

by iheardarumor (sonicraptors)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Mentions, M/M, ben really isn't even in this, brief flashbacks to vietnam, drug usage, its merely a mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25736257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonicraptors/pseuds/iheardarumor
Summary: The best nights he’d ever had in his life were spent at his side.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Kudos: 53





	projected stars across the night sky

For as long as he could remember, he used to dread going to sleep. Much more than any normal child would, for he had much more to fear than any normal child feared. 

He’d lie in his bed every night staring at the posters and drawings adorning his walls, unsuccessfully convincing himself that if he didn’t acknowledge the strangers calling for him at his feet, or at his headboard, or from his closet, then they didn’t see him either. Grace would appear at his door frame with her hand poised over the light switch, only to meet Klaus’s pleading eyes and leave them on, closing the door after flashing him a short, sympathetic smile. 

He could confide in his six other siblings about his anxieties, but they’d find a way to make it about themselves. They always did. He could confide in Grace, but he was never sure if any maternal word that came out of her mouth was from the heart or whether it was simply how she was programmed to be. And he could certainly confide in his father, if he wanted to spend another night in the mausoleum. 

So, possessing no other remedy, Klaus quickly learned to depend on himself for comfort. The constant need to be intoxicated followed shortly after. He found that when the vices started, and the voices stopped, he could finally sleep. Sure, he could never predict where he’d wake up each morning, and would often lose weeks of his life at a time, but otherwise? The sleep was fantastic.

“Have you ever tried a night light? A white noise machine, perhaps?”

Ben would always give suggestions like this the morning after particularly long benders. Smug and righteous, Klaus would tell himself. Ben must be confident in the knowledge that he’s dead and therefore did not have to lose himself within earthly bliss and worry. “ _ You know, you’re technically part of the problem _ ,” Klaus would shoot back, knowing that Ben--much like his trauma--was the one thing he couldn’t escape no matter how high he got. It would be foolish to say that Klaus didn’t know exactly what Ben meant, however. He could play the jester to everyone else in his life, but never to himself. Addiction ended one way or the other, and it had always been looming in the back of his mind, a constant presence that plagued his thoughts and “harshed” his “mellow”; since Klaus had no interest in regaining control over his body (as if he’d ever had control!), it would almost certainly end with him in a body bag. 

If he should even be so deserving of such a luxury as death. 

But he’d done more than enough group therapy during rehab to figure out  _ why _ he did this. Whatever it was, be it drugs or be it alcohol, it was a hell he chose for himself to escape the hell he didn’t sign up for. “Find a way to healthy pleasure,” he would repeat mockingly to nobody at all, a phrase of advice he’d long forgotten the origin of. Everyone around Klaus assumed he knew plenty about pleasure. After all, what was that word Ben used to describe him? Hedonistic? No, that couldn’t be right. In order to be pleasure-seeking, he’d have to have known what pleasure felt like to begin with. After nearly thirty years of this, anyone would forget where the pain ended and the pleasure began. 

Back in his childhood bedroom, it was almost exactly as he’d left it in his youth, before his first night of many away from the hellscape his father called home. His legs--only slightly longer than they used to be--hung haphazardly over the side of his bed, kicking at a pile of unwashed uniforms lying on the ground. The posters and drawings were all still there, and the room still hung heavy within the subtle stench of burnt joint wrappers. Apparently, the only thing that had changed in this capsule to the past was the boy--or rather, man--within it. Three days sober and ten months changed, Klaus couldn’t help but wonder--in the midst of his pity--if he had finally achieved the maturity his father had hopelessly wished for him and promptly given up on. 

The sun had long since set and the otherwise empty, massive house had settled along with the night sky. What little light shone throughout the hallway leading up to his room blurred at fixed intervals as tears welled up in Klaus’s eyes and spilled over onto his pillow. He had fully prepared himself for another restless night. 

Klaus was no longer running wildly through life with his eyes shut. How could he? All of the matters that used to keep him up at night, away from the sleep he so desperately needed, seemed like child’s play. He couldn’t bear to think about how, less than a month ago (or was it fifty-one years ago?), he was cajoling it up in the barracks with men he felt he’d known all his life, and a man he’d wished he could continue to know. As if life hadn’t been a rollercoaster through horse shit, being thrusted back into the time he had accidentally left--with what remained of him being torn away by the realities of war and loss--had certainly done him in. It wasn’t as if he had no means to escape the emptiness that wracked his body and shattered his soul--his father did keep quite the collection in the parlor downstairs. 

But the only thing that terrified Klaus more than remembering was forgetting.

Him.

Dave. Katz. 

He wondered when he had first known. Maybe it was when he’d first crash landed beside him, briefcase in hand, exposed and bloodied and being thrown a uniform, no questions asked. Maybe he had known when Dave was the first to see through the admittedly less-than-foolproof act Klaus had put on to mask his confusion (“I’m not even supposed to be here,” Klaus had mumbled beneath his breath. Dave smacked him playfully on the shoulder, “Well you’re here, aren’t you?”). Or maybe it was in the bar all those years ago, when he’d laid his eyes on Dave as if for the very first time. When they snuck away for just a moment--Klaus doing as he always did, but remaining acutely aware as to how much more special it all felt to Dave. How much more special it all felt  _ with _ Dave.

The best nights he’d ever had in his life were spent at his side. No, it wasn’t sober sleep, far from it. But for the first time ever, exhaustion came to Klaus--not as a side effect of the whiskey coursing through his body--but as he drifted off in the knowledge that he had finally met someone who understood Klaus as he wanted to understand himself. With someone like Dave, despite the tragic circumstances of their meeting, Klaus felt as if he had finally found respite from torment and loneliness. 

“You’re still up?” The voice came from beside him. Soft, as to not wake anyone else, but soft, still, because that was the nature of Dave to begin with.

Klaus nodded, imperceivable in the darkness. “Can’t stop thinking.”

Dave chuckled quietly as if to say he understood. And maybe he did--after all, they were both being thrown headfirst into the most useless, traumatic experience in both of their young lives. Though, Klaus had yet to bring up the whole “being from the 21st century and able to communicate with the dead, whether I like it or not” thing. Not exactly first date topic material. 

A hand found his, clammy yet gritty and warm and perfect. It squeezed lightly; Klaus returned the favor. Dave knew he couldn’t say any more, at the behest of awakening somebody nearby and spoiling another good moment, but Klaus could already feel the sleep tugging at his eyelids without further words of comfort. 

The night before Dave became simply a memory to him began and ended much like all of the others. 

However, the bedroom where he laid now was not the battlefield. Dozens of years too late and thousands of miles too far. Despite his best efforts, Dave hadn’t been summoned back to Klaus’s life, and certainly not back to his arms. But his desperation and determination to try was the only reason he had to be lying awake at this time of night, shivering and on the verge of vomiting as his body struggled to empty itself of the drugs that comprised most of his being. But the thought of him, as it did back then, seemed to revitalize him in a way no dosage of methadone he’d ever been prescribed had. 

Klaus realized that, for such beautiful moments to appear to him, the only thing he loved more than forgetting was remembering. And it was through remembering that Klaus could finally lull himself to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> [@allisonsrumors](http://www.twitter.com/allisonsrumors) on twitter.


End file.
